TEHRAN – “The media and socio-cultural elites should push their governments to display sufficient sensitivity to the issue of welfare of its individuals,” says an international relations expert.

“The key is investing in human capital internally,” Mahmood Monshipouri, an associate professor of international relations at San Francisco State University, said in an interview with the Mehr News Agency.
Following is the text of the interview:
Q: Human security is one of the important issues that governments have to consider. What is your definition of this concept, and which states like to put human security on their political agenda? What is the role of media in highlighting this issue?
A: The debate known as warfare vs. welfare lies at the heart of the discussion over national security and human security. Human security refers to the welfare of the individual members of a society in contrast to national security of a country as perceived by its leaders. Although a large number of people across the globe face such global issues as poverty, diseases like HIV-AIDS, refugees, underdevelopment, and an abuse of fundamental human rights, governing elites seem to be mainly obsessed with military spending in the name of national security. While it is true that politicians' first and most important task--or even obligation--is to protect their own countries and citizens from external threat, it is equally important to realize that sometimes the enemy is from within--that is, poverty, disease, and underdevelopment.
The difficulty here is that it is not possible to empirically measure the exact relationship between a country's human welfare and development on the one hand and its defense budget on the other. Given the complexities of political situations and histories in which different countries find themselves, any generalization regarding such relationship is not entirely valid. The trade-off between these two competing values—welfare vs. warfare-- can be measured in relative terms. According to some scholars, if we devote just $40 billion each year to antipoverty programs--away from investing it in building and promoting armies--in ten years, virtually the entire world's population could enjoy the very basic social services, including education and health care and nutrition, drinkable water, and sanitation. Increasingly, countries like Germany, Japan, and Switzerland, which have invested heavily in their human security of their citizens, have proved to be the most successful nations in their attempt to bolster their citizens' standard of living.
Migration, facilitated by the globalization process, has also led to a border-less world, further intensifying the refugee crisis throughout the world. The media and socio-cultural elites should push their governments to display sufficient sensitivity to the issue of welfare of its individuals. The key is investing in human capital internally. The international community must emphasize and welcome investment in peace and reasonable resolution of conflicts (Israeli-Palestinian case) to prevent further humanitarian crises such as those in Africa, caused by the spread of HIV-AIDS, displacement of people in their own countries/homeland, the refugee crisis in the developing world, and more recently the blockade of Gaza. The media need to put under closer scrutiny the ratio of defense spending to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to examine whether the proper attention is given to the internal issues of particular relevance to human welfare. That is what precisely investigative journalism should be about, constantly bringing to public attention the tough living conditions under which a great portion of their own population lives.
Professor Mahmood Monshipouri is a faculty member of the department of international relations at San Francisco State University. His most recent work is “Muslims in Global Politics: Identities, Interests, and Human Rights”. He is also currently working on editing a book on human rights in the Middle East